


Mostly Settled

by everythingmurky



Series: These Dangerous Extra Thoughts [4]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Introspection, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 01:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10675296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingmurky/pseuds/everythingmurky
Summary: The case is over, but Hardy is still thinking, and some of those thoughts involve Miller, despite his best efforts.





	Mostly Settled

**Author's Note:**

> I think in some ways, this could be the end of this little extra thought series, since it does go to the end episode and tie it all in. It's not going to be the only fic by far or even the best one that looks at what he was thinking in the last episode, but it does connect my other dots.

* * *

Hardy had seen monsters before, killers. He'd done that more times than he wanted to think about, and most of them were the same. He knew what they were, had come to expect it. As he told Miller before, murder made sense to him. Sexual crimes didn't.

He had trouble wrapping his head around them, trouble understanding why a person could ever justify that to themselves. He could see murder, he'd been angry enough for that himself a few times now, and he was under no illusions about it. Under the right circumstances, anyone could kill, another thing he'd told Miller before. She'd said that people had a moral compass.

He reminded her that those broke.

Still, sitting across from Micheal Lucas, he still struggled to understand what he was hearing. It was like the boy had been seduced into this crime, and it sickened him. To think it was just that easy to get a child to rape... Horrifying.

(This little shit had pictures of Daisy, sexual ones, and Hardy wished he'd already carried out his threat and cut the boy's cock off. He didn't care if the kid had been coerced. What he'd done was wrong, and he could have made another choice, even if Leo had hit him.)

Then he sat across from the real monster, Leo himself.

No remorse. Not a hint of decency or even humanity in him. He hadn't bothered to learn those women's names. He didn't see them as people, didn't seem to care that, as Miller pointed out, their bodies weren't his to use. Not that Humphries cared. He'd used those women, he'd used that boy, and he laughed like it was all some sort of game.

Damned sociopath.

(Another example of how people with a moral compass could be pushed to murder. He had certainly wanted to harm that one. Cocky little shite deserved it. Jail wasn't enough for him, and Hardy knew it.)

* * *

He found Miller outside on the steps, crying.

This case had gotten to her, almost from the start. It made him question things, wonder about her past in ways he didn't want to think about, and mostly he shoved those thoughts away and figured it was because she was just too nice, always had been. Her personality seemed at odds with being a copper, and even with him she stayed kind, inviting him over and all when she hated him, and she'd trusted her friends and the town—and unfortunately, her husband. He'd seen her harden, and he knew he'd helped that. 

(Part of him was proud. Part of him was disappointed she'd lost that much of herself and become too much like him, which was a waste of anyone, really.)

“He's not what men are,” Hardy told her, because he had to believe, even as much as this case had made him ashamed to be a man, that there were others out there better than him, and he would never have done this.

(It was another shitty platitude, but she accepted that one better than the other one.)

He didn't try and hug her, knowing how she'd react to that and just how dangerous it would be if they broke that invisible barrier that still more or less existed between them. He just sat and offered the support of his company, unwilling to leave her alone right now, even if he didn't even have another bad platitude to offer as conversation.

So they said nothing.

(And he did not once try and offer comfort of any other kind. Mostly, he was proud of that.)

* * *

Daisy said she was proud of him.

He was surprised, because those words usually went from the parent to the child, and yet she'd said it. She hugged him in public. These he all took as good signs, and he thought any future attempts to buy tickets and leave were far in the future, when she finished school in the future far.

(It helped, he supposed, that he'd arrested one of the boys who'd been harassing her. That had to put the fear of God or at least higher authority into those little pricks, because she seemed better, though maybe it was because of Chloe Latimer, too. Daisy had a friend and a champion in her, just like Miller had in Beth or was that vice versa? He didn't know.)

* * *

Miller asked him to the pub.

He considered it. He wanted it. It was almost like being asked on a date, and he could do with one of those that wasn't a disaster and was with someone he could actually talk to. He said no, of course, knowing that he didn't dare risk having too much to drink around Miller.

(Things might get said that should never be said. He would not allow that.)

So he said he'd see her tomorrow.

She asked if he was staying.

Like she _wanted_ him to stay.

(How much? He wondered, and that was a dangerous thing, too.)

So all he told her was that he'd see her tomorrow. Then he walked off in the opposite direction, leaving himself nowhere else to go.

He was here. He was staying. Maybe he was even a bit stuck.

(This was home, though, and so was she.)


End file.
